


Ruin the Party

by Miscellany



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Frottage, Getting Together, Hotdogging, Identity Porn, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Size Kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-07-12 21:27:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7123177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miscellany/pseuds/Miscellany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were born obscenely rich.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the 30s-40s. I don't claim to offer impeccable historical accuracy.

Bucky didn't really think about it because it had nothing to do with him. He'd never had a shortage of women anyway and women were swell. They were endlessly fascinating and easy on the eyes and Bucky got along with them famously. When he was sixteen he would sneak out of the dorms to go dancing. By now he knew how to pick the ones that wouldn't make a scene when the affair ended with a discreet check so it was all easy and fun. He didn't need to look for company anywhere else.

But he knew there were fellows who preferred their own sex, certainly. He never minded them because everybody had their vices. Vices made people interesting. The trick was not to be vulgar about them and for the most part Bucky's acquaintances weren't.

So Bucky didn't care and most of the time didn't even notice people of that type. He was even friends with a few men who wore red ties to the Oak Room or clear nail polish at the Astor. He just didn't imagine he could do anything so outré as falling in love with a man. 

The truth was, Bucky was absolutely lousy with money. If anything his family came out richer after the Crash. He'd been to all the right private schools where the principals acted like the order of the day was all "sir, yes, sir" but were in fact kissing up to boys like Bucky all the time. He put on black ties for dinner and made the acceptable sort of trouble and was just shuffled off to the next school. It was the same everywhere, the same kind of guys, the same posturing, the same overtures of closeness based on who was useful to know. Bucky had lots of friends, he just didn't have any friends. It didn't bother him, and with a family as big as his he would never run out of people to rely on.

The closest thing to a real friend he had was Steve Rogers. Steve was much in the same boat as him, filthy rich and Irish Catholic which inevitably translated to "common" to a certain type of old money. He too had an enormous family though no siblings, only cousins. But there the similarity stopped. Steve was a tiny, puny thing, always had been, and he preferred reading and doodling to parties. He also got into more fistfights than anyone else Bucky knew. That was how they became friends, actually.

Their mothers were friends and they kept dragging Steve and Bucky along on visits, likely hoping they would strike it out, Bucky realized later. It didn't happen at first. Bucky was always polite, but he was bored out of his mind and Steve didn't seem inclined to entertain him, which made Steve seem boring too.

Then one time when they were ten Bucky convinced Steve to sneak out of Steve's brownstone in the East Forties and into the yard it shared with several similarly elegant buildings. He'd just found out Gloria Swanson was staying with one of Steve's neighbors and wanted to see her. He persuaded Steve easily - Steve had never been subjected to Bucky's charm and therefore hadn't yet developed any defenses for it. When they hung around outside for ten whole minutes and nothing happened, Bucky got bored so they went exploring.

Steve looked curiously at everything and asked Bucky a ton of questions which made Bucky feel knowledgeable and important so he answered at length. Then Steve offered his own opinions in a quiet, firm voice and Bucky decided he wasn't really boring at all. They had an absolute gas of a time and completely lost track of the hour.

Then Bucky lined up for a water fountain for a minute and came back to Steve getting the living daylights beaten out of him by two older boys. Of course Bucky jumped into the fray. Steve was scrappy and fearless even if he was a complete disaster in a fight, and they actually won by a nose. They were laughing with their hands on their knees, Steve's breath wheezing a little alarmingly, when a policeman approached them.

It turned out Mrs. Rogers had been beside herself with worry because Steve suffered from a million ailments and wasn't allowed to do anything fun for fear it would knock him down dead. Bucky's good humor quickly evaporated in the face of his mother's disapproving glare and Mrs. Rogers' tears. For his own part Steve just looked embarrassed and curiously resigned. He wouldn't look at Bucky while Bucky and his mother took their leave.

Later on Bucky's mother warned him that Steve's frailness was a delicate topic for his family and that Bucky shouldn't be unkind about it. Bucky knew all that without being told, of course. The next time he met Steve he didn't try to get him in trouble but they still talked and Steve showed him his drawings and it was fun. Steve wasn't stuck-up or self-important or mean-minded like most of the boys Bucky knew, and he wasn't a pushover either. He would get this expression on his face from time to time though, a happy sort of puzzlement like he couldn't imagine why Bucky was talking to him.

They were thick as thieves for a couple of months. It couldn't last. They went to different schools and their families often missed each other in the city and even though they were still friendly when they met and all their interactions were tinged with a sincerity Bucky treasured, they were just too different. Bucky couldn't drag Steve around with him to smoke-filled bars and Steve probably wouldn't have been interested anyway. Still, Bucky always thought fondly of Steve whenever he was reminded of him.

They didn't see each other for a couple of years, Bucky learning the business whenever he had a spare moment, Steve off to Yale. Bucky still popped into the city on weekends sometimes. He would come in with forty dollars, check in at the Waldorf-Astoria or the Ambassador depending on his mood, and then pass his time at the theatre, the Stork Club or Tony's on West 52nd where an absolute dish of a broad sang, or go up to Harlem. He actually had a duplex on Park Avenue but it was usually less bother to stay at a hotel. When the weekend was over Bucky would board the train with two or three dollars in his pocket, a killer hangover and a headful of gossip to dole out to his sisters once he came home.

Then one time he bumped into Steve at the Plaza, and without any fanfares everything changed.

Steve had turned twenty the previous month and Bucky had, of course, sent him a present and a note that was longer and more heartfelt than was necessary given their acquaintance. So when Steve noticed him and gave him a grin - a slow, somewhat hesitant but entirely warm thing that transformed his whole face - it wasn't entirely unwarranted. Bucky couldn't imagine why for the life of him, but he felt absolutely transfixed. He ditched the crowd he was with as quickly as possible and approached Steve.

Steve was different now, like he'd come into his own at college. There was a very faint bruise on his cheekbone and Bucky had the weird, wild urge to rub it away like an ink stain.

"Still living dangerously, I see," he said.

Steve looked down as if embarrassed but he wasn't, not really, just acknowledging the truth of it. "What can I say, I'm incorrigible."

"That makes two of us," Bucky answered. He really wanted to see more of Steve.

It was strange, Steve was no more glamorous or good-looking than he had been. His tailored clothes still hung off him as if from a hanger. Bucky was positively towering over him. Steve was still the best company Bucky could imagine right now.

"I've got tickets to the ballet, and there's a party we might swing by later," he said. The ballet tickets were a joke gift, but he thought Steve might get a kick out of them, and then Steve's eyes lit up with interest and that was that.

* * *

The ballet was boring but Steve's rapture made up for it, and then at Maury Paul's party he nearly got himself punched for publicly stating some well-known truths about the conditions in the streets full of flophouses Barney Billinger's family rented out. Bucky found the whole thing hilarious and so did enough other guests so that Billinger was forced to leave after a barely respectable interval, still fuming.

Steve asked a lot of his quiet, polite questions and Bucky answered like he used to do when they were children. Sometimes he even volunteered information before Steve had voiced his curiosity. For instance, when he noticed Steve looking at the strikingly beautiful man handing Maury a drink.

"That's the guy he's keeping in Jersey," he told Steve casually, taking a drag out of his cigarette. They'd retired to a balcony, Bucky downwind to Steve so the smoke would bother him less.

Steve's eyebrows drew together in charming bemusement. "Keeping how?"

"You know, like a woman," Bucky explained bluntly. Steve blinked at him. "The guy's got a wife and child. Maury pays for everything, down to her stockings and the little tot's Sunday ties. Brings the man in on weekends to show him off like a prize poodle."

Steve looked like he couldn't think what to say. Bucky clapped him on the shoulder. He meant to do it gently but he was tipsy and Steve was so little he stumbled under it. Bucky squeezed his bony collarbone in apology.

"You want to get out of here?" he asked, stubbing out his cigarette on the wrought iron railing and flicking it down towards the street.

"I think I do," Steve murmured.

The night was clear and mild so they walked to Bucky's hotel. Bucky made the offer naturally, not even entirely aware himself what he was asking.

"Want to come up for a drink?"

"I shouldn't. I've already had one too many."

"You've only had two."

"Like I said, one too many."

"So much for living dangerously."

Now was the time to smile and take the rejection like a good sport, but Bucky really didn't want to let Steve go. When he slung a friendly arm over Steve's shoulders, Steve caved in. 

They had the drink sitting on Bucky's bed in their shirtsleeves, ties pulled loose. Steve looked so much more relaxed like this, with his formerly slicked back hair falling over the side of his forehead.

"I should go," he said. He made no move to get up.

"You staying back at home? It's a long walk," said Bucky, even though it wasn't. The tumbler dangled precariously from his fingers. He set it down on the floor. "Why don't you sleep here? Plenty of room. We'll have breakfast together. It'll be grand."

Steve looked conflicted. He licked his lips, and Bucky leaned in and kissed him.

And God, it was so sweet. Steve's lips felt soft and pliant and when Bucky turned his head just so their tongues touched gently. He deepened the kiss, spurned on by sudden hunger. He cupped the back of Steve's head with one hand and his jaw with another and drank him in. They parted eventually, still so close they were breathing each other's breath. Steve refused to look up but that was okay. Bucky knew what to do.

He kissed Steve again, hand sliding down his back. It was easy to lower him to the bed and settle on top.

"What are you doing?" Steve asked, sounding overwhelmed.

"Feels good, doesn't it?"

He kissed Steve's throat, unbuttoned his shirt to get to the delicate bones on top of his chest. He was hard already, arousal shamelessly poking Steve in the thigh. Steve shifted restlessly underneath him, clutched at his ribs. Bucky cupped him through his trousers and that made Steve thrash, hands flying up to cover his face.

Bucky took advantage of the distraction to get rid of whatever clothes were in their way. He opened Steve's shirt and pulled his undershirt up his chest. He slid his palm over the smooth skin of Steve's scrawny front, making Steve's belly jump ticklishly. That made Bucky sit back, impatient now. He opened up his own trousers and then started on Steve's.

Steve seemed to wake up when Bucky tugged them down his legs along with his underwear. He held on Bucky's wrist, eyes on the red head of Bucky's cock bobbing heavily out of his open fly. Bucky leaned in to kiss him again, coaxing. He fit his cock between Steve's thighs when Steve started kissing back and put his own palm over Steve's smaller erection, rubbing the heel of his hand against the underside.

They fell into a rhythm. Steve's breath came in long, labored gulps and he looked so confused and shaken Bucky put his other arm under his shoulders and held him close to reassure him. His thighs were thin and spare, making for a shallow, unsatisfying passage to fuck into. To Bucky it felt like Steve's whole body was teasing him, refusing to soothe him now it had inflamed him. He kept diving for Steve's mouth with open mouthed, shallow kisses, kept changing the angle and never getting it quite right. Steve's little dick was slippery now, hard to keep hold of and play with. It was all so frustrating in the best way.

Steve threw his head to the side, stuffed his knuckles into his mouth, his other hand scrambling at Bucky's chest. Bucky grunted at the scratch of blunt nails and arched his back, fucking rougher. His cockhead slipped past Steve's tight balls and nudged at his cleft. It slid past his asshole once, twice, and Steve moaned, plaintive. It was all it took. Bucky finished in long, helpless spurts with his cock cradled between Steve's skinny cheeks.

He collapsed on top, selfish in bliss. Steve fit comfortably underneath him and it wasn't until he started shoving at Bucky impatiently that Bucky moved. He shifted on his side, propped himself up on one elbow and started jerking Steve off with a tight fist, teasing the wet head with his thumb. Steve made a high, unselfconscious noise and came in seconds, convulsing. The sight made Bucky's cock twinge with renewed interest, but the rest of him was tired and lazy. Perhaps in the morning.

Courtesy satisfied, Bucky rolled over, kicked off his trousers and tugged the covers free. Next to him Steve was still a wreck, making no move to get his clothes in order or wipe himself off. Bucky sighed and reached for him, and Steve drew in on himself. They stood frozen like that for a moment, Bucky's hand hovering over Steve's stomach before Bucky jerked it back. Steve looked away, tight-lipped, and Bucky felt the first stirrings of confused frustration encroaching on his afterglow. He didn't know and right now didn't care what had gotten Steve into a snit. He turned off the light, got under the covers and let Steve deal with his disheveled state however he saw fit. Hopefully he'd be in a better mood in the morning.

* * *

He wasn't. In the morning he was stiffly polite and flatly refused to have breakfast with Bucky. Bucky stood next to the bed like an idiot while Steve threw on his clothes with an almost insulting speed.

"Steve," he tried, "did I offend you somehow?"

This caused Steve to stop putting on his shoe and stare at Bucky incredulously.

"It can't be that you stayed the night," Bucky said, though it was clearly that. He was trying to salvage the situation here and if Steve would just play along everything would be fine between them. Steve should play along, given how generous and cordial he'd been with Bucky during their acquaintance. He couldn't want to sever ties just so he wouldn't be reminded of one stupid night. "We were both drunk and it was nothing, a bit of friendly fooling around. You know how it is."

"No, I don't," Steve answered, and if anything he sounded colder than before. Worse, there was an undertone to his voice Bucky couldn't decipher but didn't like. It was almost like contempt, but that couldn't be. That wasn't Steve.

"Oh, come on," he said, gesturing at Steve. "You were in the same prep schools as me, and you're in college for goodness' sake. They don't call what we did last night the Princeton first-year special for nothing."

Which was a mistake. Steve blanched and threw himself into dressing with renewed, angry vigor. Bucky had gathered by now this had been Steve's first time helping out a friend. Hard to believe given how small he was and even complete trolls of similar stature were getting banged harder than stall doors in prep school. But anyway, first time, a bit of a shock, Bucky could understand that. What he couldn't fathom was why Steve didn't just pretend that nothing happened, that he didn't remember or that it wasn't a big deal like anyone else would have. In fact it really wasn't a big deal. They'd had a nice night, as far as Bucky was concerned they should have been better friends for it. Instead Steve was freezing him out.

"Fine then, if you insist on being such a wet rag," he bit out. Steve's shoulders stiffened but outwardly he acted like he hadn't even heard Bucky, like Bucky was beneath his notice. Easily dismissed like a cheap whore once morning came, and the thought made Bucky meaner. "I don't know why I even bothered with you. Guess it was pity, but you're not even worth that."

Steve flinched like Bucky had just socked him. Bucky regreted the lie immediately, opened his mouth to take it back. Before he could say anything Steve streaked past him and out the door, one shoe still in his hand and his bow tie abandoned on the carped, curled like a question mark.

They avoided each other for the next three years.


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky had forgotten how much he hated the party circuit. That day it had seemed that the circus would never end. A charity luncheon followed by a fashion show his sister had promised to attend but couldn't because of fatigue due to the pregnancy, then a cocktail at five mercifully cut short because he had to get ready for the opera. Next Bucky posed dutifully with his companion and the slaughtered fox farm's worth of furs she was wearing so that he could make the society pages and placate his mother for all the coverage of the explosion at Stark Industries last week. The finishing blow was tagging along afterwards with Wilbur Crosby and some slimy playwright friend of his, hoping to needle out some information about what Tommy had been up to before it got plastered all over the papers. Instead he got treated to the spectacle of Crosby's greasy-faced, doughy friend propositioning the sailors swarming through Times Square in search of entertainment.

Now he was chain-smoking and chugging awful coffee at an Automat on 42nd street, hating that he'd wasted his whole day. He wanted to go back to the apartment even less than he wanted to be out of it.

What the hell had happened to him? He never used to enjoy all of it, but even on his worst days he navigated his social obligations well enough. He couldn't pinpoint when it all changed, but it had, and now he felt like he was stuck on an ever accelerating merry-go-round - the more queasy it made him, the harder it was to step down. Bucky liked the work he and Stark were doing, what they were building, fighting for and pulling off by the skin of their teeth, but that didn't change the fact that sometimes he wanted to dive into the car and drive and not stop until he hit a place where no one did a double take when they heard his name. Or like today, enter a seedy diner in his tails and court a mugging.

He rose to leave only when he ran out of cigarettes. It was very late and the place was nearly empty, and several of the patrons were eyeing Bucky's gold cufflinks speculatively. He didn't much care. Still, just outside the door he paused, waiting to see if someone would try to follow him. That was when he saw the man.

He stood across the street, stock still but somehow not, his whole body heaving and swaying with every breath. He had a look on like he was sizing up the diner, trying to decide whether to come in or not. Bucky would have advised not. The man was standing barefoot on the dirty pavement and clothes meant for someone a stone lighter and a foot shorter stretched to bursting on his big frame. In the middle of the last snap of winter he didn't appear to feel the cold at all.

Then he stepped forward into the light, looking down from the sign and straight into Bucky. For a moment Bucky felt like he'd just glimpsed a ghost. The man looked eerily like Steve Rogers, if someone had scaled up Steve by one third and forced him to haul bricks for ten years. It was one of those surreal moments in the small hours of the night when lack of sleep and too much stimulants warped the world into something unknown and sinister. Soon the stranger would cock his head or present his profile and the eerie similarity would reveal itself to be just a trick of the light. Bucky was sure of it.

Then the man's face shifted with recognition. It did not stop resembling Steve's either. But of course there was another explanation. Bucky crossed over before he could think it through.

"Forgive me, I don't believe we've been introduced," he said with his most polished smile, raising his hand for a handshake. The man took it mechanically. He was looking at Bucky with a wide-eyed, caught look in his eyes. "Bucky Barnes. I believe I'm acquainted with your family."

He waited for the man - the Rogers, Bucky was more and more certain with every passing moment - to pick up the thread of the conversation and offer his own name, but he just kept on staring at Bucky. The only change was that mortification started edging out the shock. Bucky forged on to the rescue.

"Can I offer you a ride? My car's not far."

* * *

Rogers refused to accept Bucky's lambskin-lined coat so Bucky shrugged it off and draped it over his shoulders. That cut off Rogers' protests that he didn't need it, but he didn't put it on either. He just held the sides closed and hunched under it. The gesture reminded Bucky strongly of Steve, Steve when he felt he was being offered unreasonable accommodation but felt it would be churlish or cause a scene to be stubborn. Bucky smiled to himself at the thought of this burly fellow sharing the mannerisms of twig-like Steve. It was nice, in a way, to be reminded of Steve without the specter of their ugly parting. Perhaps that was why Bucky had immediately started calling Steve's cousin 'Rogers' so familiarly. Rogers had mumbled out his first name, but Bucky hadn't caught it. No matter, Rogers fit him so well somehow.

They took a taxi to Bucky's car, where Rogers halted by the passenger door. Bucky expected he would apologize for his dirty feet.

"Don't worry about it," Bucky told him preemptively, dialing up the smile from polished to cordial. For some reason it only made Rogers' face close off. He climbed in without a word. He might have been embarrassed, or taken Bucky's attempt at tact for flippancy. Maybe he was afraid Bucky would spread the story far and wide first chance he got. Bucky doubted any spoken reassurance would do much but put them into an even more awkward spot, so he decided to ignore it for now. "Where to?"

Rogers looked like he hadn't figured out that part yet and no ideas were presenting themselves at the moment.

"My place then," Bucky offered. A crinkle of leather was the only answer, Rogers fidgeting in the passenger seat. Bucky went with his own suggestion.

Bucky's building was a place of comfort and security, but the guests coming and going at all hours of the night - not to mention the cops called in so often to Frazier's parties that he had rote press releases at the ready - made for little privacy. Bucky had to smuggle Rogers in through the delivery elevator.

"Bathroom's that way. Make yourself at home," Bucky said once safely inside. He left his new guest downstairs to fend for himself and took the stairs two at a time. He had to sit on his bed to untie his shoes, exhaustion catching up with him. At the same time he felt oddly energized, almost giddy. Must have been all that coffee.

He shed everything stiff and unnecessary on the way to his closet and rummaged around for something that would suit them both. For himself he took out his favorite smoking jacket and a pair of freelancers. Rogers was more difficult. In the end Bucky chose woolen trousers, a simple shirt and a cashmere jumper, warm clothes Rogers could go home in if he insisted on doing it tonight after all.

Rogers was still in the bathroom when Bucky hoofed it downstairs, so Bucky knocked on the door loud enough to drown the sound of running water. There was a clatter from inside, followed by Rogers' half-guilty, half-wary voice, "yes?".

"Incoming delivery," said Bucky.

The door opened grudgingly, and Bucky handed over the bundle through a gap only wide enough to do so. Rogers cleared his throat. "Thank you," he said, and Bucky nodded and backed off because it was clear as daylight the man still felt uncomfortable.

Rogers ventured out five minutes later, looking considerably more respectable. Bucky's clothes were a little too tight on him across the shoulders, but they would serve. Rogers' socked feet made fists in the carpet at the scrutiny, which was when Bucky realized he'd been staring.

"No shoes," he said, a distraction. "Sorry, I forgot."

"That's all right. You've been... very kind," Rogers said awkwardly.

Bucky laughed. Rogers' eyebrows climbed up. "That sounded like pulling teeth. You don't have to thank me. Let's just say I have a debt of hospitality to your family. After the friendship and courtesy Mrs. Rogers - your aunt, I assume - has shown her over the years, my mother would kill me if I acted ungraciously towards any of her relations. So you see, I'm only looking out for myself here."

It was delivered perfectly, if Bucky said so himself. Just the right amount of humorous deflection coupled with a veiled reminder that Bucky had too much invested in the acquaintance to spread gossip about Rogers. Rogers should have relaxed a little, if not felt completely at ease. Instead the little groove between his eyebrows dug deeper. He looked like he expected the other shoe to drop any moment now. It was starting to get annoying.

"A drink?" Bucky asked, hoping to crack the ice this way. He gestured at his couch in a silent invitation while he strode off to his drinks cabinet.

"No! I mean, I'm all right, thank you," Rogers said in a rush. He sat quickly on one of Bucky's armchairs.

It was Bucky's turn to raise his eyebrows, but Rogers was busy studying some ugly, terribly fashionable painting on Bucky's wall like his life depended on it. Bucky let it go. His giddiness was evaporating as fast as the bubbles off cheap champagne, leaving only the exhaustion in its wake.

He made himself a Ward 8 without keeping up the conversation, and carried it over to the couch. He left another glass on the table in front of Rogers.

"Club soda," he said, a tad acerbically, at Rogers' questioning look. "In case you change your mind."

Bucky sipped his cocktail in silence, all out of social graces for the moment. Rogers kept throwing him sideways looks. Eventually he did reach for the glass of water. And God, the more Bucky looked at him, the more similarities he found with Steve. Not just their features, but their gestures, their bearing. The way Rogers tugged up the sleeve of the arm holding his glass before trying a mouthful.

He told himself he had to stop comparing. They weren't the same, Rogers and Steve, and it was clear they both didn't want to have anything to do with him.

For the first time Bucky wondered if Rogers' antipathy had something to do with Steve. Maybe Steve had confided something, not exactly what happened between them, that was unthinkable, but something about them having a falling out. He hoped not. He thought not, considering Steve had always been very private and Bucky doubted he was particularly close to this cousin. He'd never mentioned him, for one. For all society knew, Steve and Bucky's distance was a result of indifference rather than a rift, and Steve must have gone to some pains to give that impression. It wasn't true, of course. If he'd really been indifferent, he wouldn't have made such a concerted effort to avoid Bucky.

"Aren't you going to ask?" Rogers said. Bucky had all but forgotten he was there. Rogers had finished his water and was now turning the empty glass over and over in his hands.

"Ask what?"

"What I was doing there. Why I was in that state."

"No, I didn't intend to ask."

"And why not?" Rogers' chin lifted up. He sounded almost challenging now.

"Because it's none of my business," Bucky answered, looking him in the eye. It was Rogers who looked away first. "Would you like me to get you a blanket, or would you prefer to call for a cab?"

The silence stretched for so long that Bucky once again made the choice for Rogers. "Blanket it is."

Bucky didn't have a spare bedroom precisely because he didn't want houseguests. His brother had practically been living here before he converted the guest room upstairs into a billiard room. Even then he probably had enough blankets in the linen closet to host an orgy in Siberia. He grabbed one for Rogers adding a pillow, and carried them downstairs. He would offer pajamas but something told him Rogers would protest, and by now Bucky was too tired to be forcefully hospitable.

Rogers sprung up from the armchair as if a spring had poked him in the ass when he saw Bucky. Bucky set the blanket on the couch, intent on getting to his nice, soft bed.

"Well, good night," he told Rogers, not waiting for an answer.

Upstairs he removed whichever clothes seemed most obliging and flopped face down on the covers. He was asleep in an instant.

* * *

Long years of practice had conditioned Bucky to rise at a more or less respectable hour even when he'd gone to bed at anything but. He rose at about nine, had a scalding shower to nudge his muscles into cooperating, dressed mechanically and wandered downstairs. He still wasn't sure what to do about his guest, or even if he wanted to do anything about him. Rogers was a mystery, but Bucky had said the truth, it wasn't any of his business and he had no rational reason to make it so.

Of course then he saw Rogers sleeping folded neatly on his side, hair over his forehead, looking exactly like Steve had in Bucky's hotel room bed three years ago. He might not have a rational reason to get involved, but this irrational one was proving very compelling.

Rogers woke up as soon as Bucky touched his shoulder.

"Morning," Bucky said.

Rogers looked at him uncomprehendingly for a couple of seconds, then he looked at his own hand, groaned and covered his eyes with his forearm. Bucky scarcely had time to feel amused when Rogers remembered himself enough to sit up and echo the greeting.

"I was thinking breakfast as a first order of business. I usually have mine at Jumble," Bucky continued.

Rogers was about as easy to decipher today as he'd been yesterday. He looked at Bucky quietly for a long moment, then said only, "I've never been."

"No time like the present," Bucky told him sagely.

He waited while Rogers got himself in what he deemed was respectable condition, then lent him a suede leather huntsman jacket and a muffler and herded him as unobtrusively as he could towards the elevator. Breakfast was calling, and finding an appreciative audience in Bucky's growling stomach.

Rogers climbed into the passenger seat without prompting, running an absent hand over the red leather upholstery.

"I don't know much about cars, but yours is definitely eye-catching," he said. He paused while Bucky guided the sleek, black bulk of the car into traffic, and then continued. "Custom-built by Mr. Stark, isn't it?"

"That's right. A Stark Sports Tourer with minor adjustments." She was so streamlined she cut through air like a hot knife through butter, she purred like a kitten and reached 100mph on the open road. And of course, she also served her primary function, to be visible. All Stark Sports models were selling like hotcakes because Bucky knew how to look rakish while leaning against a fender, and there was never a shortage of photographers willing to immortalize the moment.

There was another quiet spell, if it could be called that with the din of the city all around them, but this one didn't feel uncomfortable to Bucky. Strangely, it was Rogers who broke the silence first.

"Do you know Mr. Stark well?"

It was a question Bucky heard a lot, as if by being forced to acknowledge an acquaintance he wasn't hiding in the first place he lost a point in the game of influence and prestige. Do you know Howard Stark, the consummate parvenu? Howard Stark, so distressingly Italian despite the carefully americanized name one couldn't help thinking he'd missed his calling as a gangster? If only he'd been Jewish. New York was fortunate to have a perfectly lovely group of Jewish people, wouldn't you agree? There was a world of meaning behind that question, often spoken out loud when Bucky played dumb to the hints.

Only Rogers didn't sound like he was coming at it from the same angle.

"I do. We're in business together. You might have heard," Bucky answered him.

"It would be impossible not to have heard, considering how often you make the papers," Rogers said, and aside from the peculiar undertone of the probing Bucky couldn't yet make out, it almost sounded like Steve's brand of wry, gentle teasing.

Jumble, when they got to it, was hardly deserted, but Bucky hadn't been generous with his tips and smiles here for months for nothing. He and Rogers were whisked off to a well-appointed booth and fortified with hot coffee while waiting for the main provisions to arrive.

Bucky looked around in an effort to distract himself from Rogers tugging his damn sleeve up once again. It was a testament to how good the food was that Jumble drew such a brunch crowd even with all the mirrors decorating the walls. No one could avoid looking at their own and others' hungover mugs. Bucky wasn't hungover today but he still looked pale and decadent next to Rogers and his glowing good health.

Rogers popped, somehow, in the dark greens, beiges and browns of his borrowed clothes. Mirror Rogers raised the cup towards his lips, acting unremarkable right up until his eyes bored into Bucky over the porcelain rim before sliding safely away as Rogers set the coffee down. Bucky had to remind himself to breathe.

He watched Rogers cut up his food into tiny pieces, like Steve, and drink his coffee until the liquid was almost but not quite low enough to get a refill because he didn't really like it, like Steve. Bucky ate on autopilot and only really woke up when they were already outside and Rogers had hailed a cab. He offered his hand, and Bucky shook it. It was just a handshake, nice, straightforward, no power games. Bucky had the absurd urge to cover the back of Rogers' palm with his other hand, trap him there. 

"Where are you going now?" he asked, perhaps presumptuously.

"Home. Whether I like it or not, it's-" Rogers cut himself off and looked away. He tugged off Bucky's muffler one-handed and held it out. "I'll send over the rest of your clothes. It was very nice seeing you."

"Don't send them. Bring them along," Bucky told him. Rogers paused, one foot already through the open taxi door. Bucky wound his warmed-up muffler around his own throat. Rogers already looked chilly without it, cheeks turning red with cold.

"We'll see," Rogers said eventually, and folded himself clumsily into the back seat. Bucky backed away as the taxi joined the stream of cars. It was too bad the glare of the sun prevented him from seeing whether Rogers threw a final look his way or not.

Two days later the clothes arrived, neatly wrapped and labeled in a hand too even to belong to anyone else but a secretary.

Well, it wasn't the end of the world. It wasn't even the first time Bucky had been dropped by a Rogers like a hot potato. Two days later Maureen called to say the baby had kicked, and then Bucky spent the weekend out on Stark's yacht with half the corps de ballet of the Bolshoi troupe. The girls charmingly pretended not to know how to swim so Bucky pretended to teach them, and he hardly ever thought about Rogers, Steve, or any other pointless thing of the past. Bucky was very, very good at not dwelling on pointless things.

* * *

A month later and Bucky was running on fumes, Corpse Revivers and the thick, overbrewed coffee that turned up everywhere Stark went. The first tests on the new airplane hull alloy were promising, they were looking at a 10% cost reduction with the improved riveting technology, and the only accident so far had been a spill of machine oil all over Bucky's suit.

When he ran up to Stark's office for the change of clothes he'd learned to keep at hand, the man occupying the couch in the reception room sprang to his feet. It was Rogers, back straight as an ironing board and practically oozing wholesomeness and respectability, and Bucky wasn't even surprised.

Instead he was acutely aware of the fact he smelled like an auto repair shop. Still, it wasn't in him to get self-conscious easily.

"Mr. Rogers is Mr. Stark's nine o'clock," Carmen piped in from the desk. It was near eleven now. "I've been calling, I even sent Frank down in person."

Bucky recalled the guard coming in and Stark putting him to work holding up a reflector since the fixed brace on the wall was half a foot too low. This was typical of Stark. If he really wanted to meet someone he hounded them, if they wanted to meet him he assumed they would do the same. He didn't bother turning up for appointments if something more pressing was at hand, which was always.

"I'll handle it," Bucky said, without looking away from Rogers. Rogers' eyes were wide and very blue under smooth dark eyebrows, and Carmen had the ears of a fox. "Hello again. My apologies for Stark, he was raised in a barn. I mean that, he spent half his childhood building model planes in a barn and crashing them into piles of hay. Please step through here."

Stark had his office for strangers, and then he had this, a private room to the side where he took his naps and quickie girls and where Bucky stashed his emergency suits. Rogers wouldn't have known that - at first glance it looked just like any private negotiations room, all leather couches and gleaming wood, a cigar box within easy reach on the low table. Bucky shouldered the upholstered, sound-proof door closed, and said: "Make yourself comfortable. Now, what can Stark Industries do for you?"

"Nothing," Rogers answered. He sat down reluctantly in the corner of a couch.

"Right. You arranged a meeting just to enjoy Stark's charming personality."

"It's not Mr. Stark's company that interests me," Rogers quipped, surprising a laugh out of Bucky, because who the hell made tame double entendres? Rogers, that was who.

"I'm afraid Mr. Stark is the company."

"Is that so? I hear you own twenty percent of it," Rogers said lightly.

"And he still can't forgive me for wrangling that much out of him. He won't get involved in any venture if Stark Industries' name isn't plastered all over it."

Rogers had a bad poker face. He tried to hide it but he was clearly disappointed. Bucky didn't think he'd give up, but he'd probably leave now, try to corner Stark alone some other way. And this was one mystery it was prudent to unravel.

Too bad no pretext came to mind to keep Rogers talking.

Bucky tugged his tie loose and started unbuttoning his collar.

It worked, for a distraction. Rogers stopped eyeing the door. His lips parted slightly, the barest gape, and Bucky couldn't help but smirk at him. _Point for me_. Rogers' face went through a complicated whirl of expressions like a deck of cards being shuffled, and settled on cross.

Bucky walked over slowly to the closet door, shucked his jacket. The stink of oil got worse. He tried taking off his undershirt without the mess spreading to his hair, but it wasn't easy.

"What are you doing?" Rogers' voice came, a little strange.

"Getting presentable. I hope you don't mind. I don't have anything you haven't seen before."

There was a yawning silence that Rogers' quiet breaths had filled before. Bucky figured he had thirty seconds before Rogers went from stunned to offended. Plenty of time to convince him to confide in Bucky. A cake walk.

"Listen, I should tell you I'm not interested," Rogers said, careful and low, breaking the silence before Bucky's amazing sales pitch.

Bucky blinked and turned around, still shirtless. He had no idea what Rogers was on about. "Not interested in what? Talking to anyone but Stark?"

"No, in- your attention. I'm sure there are a _lot_ of fellows who'd appreciate it, but you're wasting your time with me."

It took a while for the meaning to sink in and then it was Bucky's turn to gape at Rogers.

"You think I'm coming onto you?"

"You started taking off your clothes, and there's a red brassiere under the table," Rogers said, with faintly apologetic matter-of-factness, like he was trying to spare Bucky's feelings. Bucky would have laughed if this wasn't so absurd and frustrating.

"Jesus, Rogers. I don't have any designs on you."

Rogers nodded, humoring Bucky. He edged towards the door. "All right. My mistake."

The whole thing was ridiculous, of course, a fool notion if ever there was one. Rogers' hand was already on the doorknob, but by then Bucky had recovered enough not to let him escape so easily.

"You don't believe that. You're just trying to get me off your back about Stark. That's a dirty play to stoop to," he threw at Rogers. 

The corner of Rogers' mouth turned up humorlessly.

"Not if it's true," he said. Then he slipped out like so much sand between Bucky's fingers.

* * *

Bucky didn't do house parties as a rule, but a jittery energy had settled under his skin lately, propelling him in all kinds of directions just so he wouldn't stay still. Now here he was at the Lesters' summer place at Oyster Bay, sipping a pink gin before dinner and listening to Carresse Lester laughing, clear and high as a silver bell. Carresse was in that place between the second and eight cocktail for the day when she was really good company. She'd just promised to show him the new tattoo of a butterfly she claimed to have acquired on her thigh, when Bucky caught a piece of news more interesting than the usual drivel.

"...can't believe you rotter weren't the only one who wrote he wasn't coming and then turned up anyhow. Do you know, Viv Rogers just dropped in yesterday with the handsome rat she calls brother and that cousin of hers, you know, the sickly one. The one everybody thought wouldn't see the other side of twenty. It's the most amazing thing, my aunt has been talking to Sarah Rogers and she said they found this little German doctor and..."

But Bucky had already seen him by then, a tall, arresting figure by the French windows. Bucky's mouth was dry as dust. He couldn't decide if it was better or worse that it wasn't Steve. Rogers turned then, all well-bred boredom, and Bucky tugged on one of Caresse's curls playfully, fed her some grinning excuse and got to his feet.

Rogers spotted him when Bucky was halfway across the way towards him. His placid expression flickered, then formed back, frozen in place now like caked-on makeup. Rogers looked casually at the terrace, then back towards the room. His eyes only met Bucky's for a fraction of a second but even so the invitation was unmistakable. Bucky followed him out smoothly, like he'd been heading out all along.

It was hardly private outside, but the heavy, humid air had kept the terrace deserted. Rogers set down his glass on the balustrade, and fixed Bucky with a long look.

"Thought you wanted to keep your distance," Bucky said. "Does this mean you decided I wasn't after your virtue after all, or did you just decide to surrender it?"

Rogers' eyelids drooped, and for a moment he looked impossible. Bone-tired, wild and despairing, and not all present. Bucky almost reached for him, asked if he were all right.

"Let's go," Rogers whispered. "I want to leave. Doesn't matter where."

"Are you serious?" Bucky asked, but he could already tell Rogers was before the fervent nod.

Bucky should have told him to call a cab, or better yet take a hike. He should have asked Rogers what his problem was. He should have turned on his heel, found out if Carresse really could flutter the butterfly's wings by flexing her thigh. Bucky didn't need any more damn complications. He definitely didn't owe Rogers anything. Rogers wasn't Steve. Not that Bucky owed Steve anything either.

But then Bucky thought of Rogers' disappointment, Rogers ducking his head and acting gracious and asking somebody else to take him away, and said only "Meet me out front in ten minutes."

Bucky faked an urgent phone call, hopped into a set of driving clothes and took the car round with time to spare. He felt a little like he was making off with the silver. Or eloping with the daughter of the house. The thought amused and unsettled him at the same time. The way he got peculiar ideas into his head, Rogers himself might suggest something of the kind once Bucky had satisfied his whim. Still, he'd promised, there was no going back now.

Rogers turned up five minutes late, bare-headed in a pristine dove-gray linen suit that would be ruined after an hour of road dust but that brought out his eyes like nobody's business.

"Hop in," Bucky said, and Rogers stowed his suitcase into the trunk and really did jump over the passenger side door. Not showing off, but the way a boy ran out of school or an unbound dog might rejoice in his freedom. Bucky wriggled his fingers on the steering wheel amiably, sympathizing with the feeling, and they fled the scene in a spray of gravel and dust.

* * *

They ran smack into the rain twenty minutes later. Bucky pulled over and they scrambled to put up the top, squinting through the quickly thickening curtain of raindrops. Bucky dove back into the car first, cursing. Rogers was slower, hair darkened and eyelashes clumped with water by the time he made it in, raindrops gathered like beads along his collar. Rogers mopped himself up with his pocket square, looking abashed.

"The engine's running," he said, and Bucky shifted the gear stick reluctantly.

The water laid continuous siege to their little fortress, raindrops drumming onto the windshield like pellets. The air smelled clean and damp, a little of tobacco and a lot like hair pomade. Inside it felt close and peaceful, Rogers radiating relief like he'd just narrowly avoided a disaster, and that made him unguarded somehow, mellow. Likely as not he would go into another mood later, take a powder and act like Bucky was to blame, but for now they fit together like old friends.

* * *

Back at his, Bucky brought Rogers up to the study. He didn't normally do that with guests, but he didn't relish the prospect of sitting alone with Rogers downstairs again, in an echoing space meant for parties and noise. The change of scenery paid off, the tension leeching out of Rogers' shoulders as he took a turn about the room, inspecting Bucky's books and journals.

Bucky watched him poke around with a good-natured, unselfconscious curiosity, then poured himself a neat scotch just to have something to do before Rogers caught him gawking and grew stilted again.

"You want one?" Bucky asked, lifting up the decanter at Rogers' questioning look, expecting to be refused.

Rogers looked like he was about to do just that, but then he checked himself and instead said, "Why not?"

"That's the spirit."

They retreated to the leather chesterfield by the wall. Rogers' long, agile fingers spidered across the surface of the globe sitting by his elbow, stopping here and there before continuing their journey. They stilled over New York, caressing the city once before falling away.

"When you have the world at your fingertips, Rogers," Bucky joked, "you don't let go."

"You're mistaking me with yourself."

Bucky snorted. "Because you're so much worse off than I am."

Rogers didn't reply right away, just mused quietly, visibly gathering his thoughts. "I think I've been more fortunate than you have. I just haven't done anything with it."

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know. That's the problem. Something meaningful."

"And you think I'm doing something meaningful?" asked Bucky dubiously. That made Rogers frown.

"Of course. Stark Industries has been committed to making innovations available to everyone, and I've been paying enough attention to know how much of the credit goes to you," Rogers said, and he looked so earnest, even admiring that Bucky felt his stomach drop.

He wasn't working for the betterment of mankind. He'd been bored stiff at college, hitting one class a week and not even making the connections that were the only reason his parents had insisted he went in the first place. Eventually he'd blown the whole thing off for a month, just took off West and didn't stop until he hit the ocean.

He'd met Stark in an illegal gambling den in Santa Monica. They'd gone after the same fox. When she cleaned them both out and vanished they got drunk together. It turned out Stark was being subtly stonewalled everywhere, and Bucky's family just so happened to have a banking branch and to own a bunch of steel, copper and aluminum mines.

They were in business together by the end of the year, even if Bucky had to threaten to invest all the money he'd inherited from Grandpa Buchanan in Stark's company if his father didn't back him up on this. Bucky's father was a traditionalist. In his view to make money you did business with other people who had piles of it, and then you invested in gold, land and jewels. Sometimes art, if you were feeling really adventurous. Short-sighted. It was much easier to get money from the non-rich, not least because there were so many more of them.

Stark made ever better cars and airplanes, and then Bucky helped him convince people to buy them and ride in them. In droves. The trick was to convince them that this new car they didn't really need wasn't just a way to get from Chicago to Minneapolis to see the in-laws. That new car would transport them into a world without in-laws, get them the girl of their dreams - or several of them, it would make their acne disappear, anything at all to make them happy. In was an illusion, but it lasted long enough for money to flow.

"Technology and mass-production are the future. It's pennies from heaven, and I'm riding the wave to the biggest profit. I thought your family had the same idea, what with all the factories for low-priced goods you've been raising from here to Philly," Bucky said.

Rogers went quiet. Bucky could see him turn around this new piece of information in his mind, trying to fit it in with the stubborn conviction that Bucky was doing good in the world.

"And here I was sure you already thought I was the worst sort of cad," Bucky said, grimly amused. Maybe he wanted Rogers to contradict him.

"I don't think that."

"No? Then what do you make of me?"

Rogers' smile died before it reached his eyes. "I don't have to guess. I _know_ you're charming, easily bored and too used to getting your way."

Bucky laughed. It came out warm and smoky, and Bucky figured the whisky must have had more of an effect than he'd realized. Rogers shivered, then set down his glass next to the globe. Bucky did the same, leaning over Rogers' knees. Rogers didn't sit back, didn't put any distance between them, and Bucky kissed him almost as a dare.

Rogers was still as a statue while Bucky pulled on his lips. That was no fun, so Bucky backed off until his mouth only brushed against Rogers', the ghost of a kiss rather than the real thing. They stood like that suspended for the space of a few heartbeats, nothing to distract them from each other.

"Push me off or kiss me already," Bucky whispered, and Rogers surged forward and opened his mouth clumsily, like he was afraid he'd lose his chance otherwise. They kissed until they had to stop so Rogers could gulp down some air. Bucky sat back, letting him catch his breath. Rogers wouldn't meet his eye, so Bucky tugged on his lapel until Rogers looked at him. He put his hand to the side of Rogers' face and rubbed his thumb over the corner of his soft mouth. This time when they kissed Rogers met him halfway.

They pushed and pulled each other's clothes off in fits and starts. Rogers' jacket hit the floor first. He untucked Bucky's shirt in turn, running his hands over Bucky's back like he didn't have a clue what to do with him other than grope his way to his naked skin. Bucky let him figure it out while he tugged the sides of Rogers' shirt from underneath his curiously unmonogrammed suspenders and ran his tongue along the skin on the edge of the black wool, catching on a nipple and making Rogers squirm.

Rogers was a powerful man, muscle defined as sharply as cut diamond, and it was impossible to ignore that once he was stripped. Bucky had never found that kind of body alluring but it didn't matter now when everything about Rogers was setting Bucky's blood on fire. He kissed over the racing pulse point on Rogers' throat, putting his weight into it to keep Rogers from bucking him off when his hips pushed off the seat. Like one of those trick pictures that suddenly transformed from the silhouette of a candelabrum into a human face in profile as you stared at them, the collection of skin, bones, flesh, movements and other food for the senses that was Rogers became desirable, maddeningly so, with the suddenness of a flick of a switch. 

Rogers couldn't have kicked off his trousers without dislodging Bucky, so Bucky hovered over him. His throat jumped as Bucky got his cock out one-handed and stroked it lazily a few times. Rogers' legs twitched open and Bucky settled between them without a thought. Rogers' body tensed up as if he hadn't meant to extend the invitation, and Bucky lowered himself onto his elbow and let go of his own cock to grasp Rogers' instead. It was small for such a big man, no more than a nice handful, and Bucky liked that too. 

He spread down the slick from the head. He watched in fascination while Rogers' wide chest heaved and the thick slabs of muscle on his chest strained while Bucky handled him. His eyelashes fluttered closed like butterfly wings, like Steve's had, and Bucky twisted on the upstroke viciously and let go to shove Rogers' legs open wider. He didn't want to think about Steve, he'd been very good at not thinking about Steve. He wanted to be just Rogers and him here, nothing and no one between them. He rocked down and kissed Rogers quickly in apology Rogers couldn't have any idea he was owed. Rogers looped an arm around his neck then, clumsily rubbed his whole body up into Bucky's. It startled them both, Rogers freezing with his erection trapped between his own stomach and Bucky's splayed palm, Bucky's cock tucked accidentally into the groove of Rogers' hip.

It was a little hazy after that. Bucky couldn't stop teasing, twisting to rub his cock against the length of Rogers' thigh, back to his hip, then lining them up, feeling Rogers' compact belly heave and nervous cock jump against Bucky. Still Rogers wouldn't come, and Bucky didn't want to finish without him.

"Come on, don't be stingy," Bucky urged him. He bit on Rogers' ear, the cartilage where it wouldn't leave a mark, and Rogers wrapped his arms around Bucky's shoulders the way a drowning man clung to a piece of plywood. Bucky nosed his cheek, watched him from so close that full lips, clumped-up eyelashes and the sharp slope of a nose took up his whole field of vision, and it was almost like- Bucky buried his face into the skin of the man under him and didn't think any more.

They slotted together, slipped and slid against each other, slick with sweat now that threatened to separate them if they didn't hold on. They did though, long enough to count. Rogers came with his mouth open against Bucky's jaw, and Bucky followed, fingers buried in Rogers' hair.

When it was over Bucky had enough presence of mind to collapse on his side instead of on Rogers. There was enough space for them both the way Rogers was lying on his arm, so Bucky settled down, stretching his legs then hunkering down for a doze. Rogers' breathing slowed down gradually next to him but he didn't move, so Bucky cracked his eyes open to check on him and met head-on Rogers' fixed stare. Rogers did a double take, eyes dark and serious, and it should have been funny coupled with his mussed hair and the smear of come that had ended up on his collarbone somehow, but it wasn't. It wasn't funny at all.

Bucky sighed and retracted his arm from under Rogers. Rogers frowned and half-sat up, back propped on the arm of the couch. Bucky made a valiant but doomed attempt to continue dozing. Rogers cleared his throat.

"What now?" he asked.

Which would have been promising, if Bucky had any idea what he was doing. _I just rubbed one off on the cousin of a guy I fooled around with, a guy I so desperately wanted to be friends with that I avoided him in case I fucked it up_ , Bucky thought, _and if that isn't messed up enough I'm not sure I didn't pretend it was him tonight. How the hell would I have any answers?_

But that would be cruel and stupid to say, so Bucky ran his clean hand over his hair and suggested instead, "Now we clean up, retire to my bedroom, and you flake out on my chinchilla bedspread."

Rogers laughed like it was dragged out of his throat with a fishhook.

"You have a chinchilla bedspread? Is that some ploy to make sure people don't spend the night?"

"First time I'm getting any complaints," Bucky said, sitting up and slouching with nonchalance that came naturally after the first effort. Rogers poked him in the side, avoiding the trails of cooling spunk on his belly.

"No doubt out of politeness."

"What does that say about you?"

"That I'm honest?"

Bucky ran his palm over his front and wiped it on Rogers' hair and Rogers huffed indignantly and launched himself at him, and in that moment Bucky could almost believe this whole thing wouldn't blow up in his face. Almost.


	3. Chapter 3

They spent the next week rubbing together like two chips between the fingers of a desperate gambler. Bucky blew off every engagement other than work and slipped the phone girl in the lobby a tenner to only ever connect family. Rogers' valise migrated from the car trunk to Bucky's closet under the pretext that since Bucky had stolen him from his hosts he had Rogers for the weekend. Neither of them mentioned it when Monday came and went and Rogers didn't.

Bucky arranged for food to be delivered - because he'd only ever had cocktail garnishes to eat and Rogers had cleaned him out of Maraschino cherries and olives the first night, and gave Rogers his spare key - because Rogers had his own complicated business and wouldn't just lounge around in Bucky's dressing gown all day, and lined his razor case up with Rogers' by the bathroom sink. He let Rogers have the right side of the bed. In the morning, he kissed the dip of Rogers' bare shoulder to wake him up. All of it felt as natural as breathing, nothing like accommodating a sudden guest and everything like Bucky's life was rearranging itself around a new center of gravity.

That wasn't what it was, it couldn't be, but it didn't promise to end in a severance of all contact either.

It occurred to Bucky that would make it the most meaningful affair he'd had his whole life, and wasn't that something.

He kept the revelation to himself, of course. That line of thought would send anyone with any sense running for the hills, and Bucky wasn't in any hurry to scare Rogers away. Still, it was comforting somehow, to think they could salvage a friendly acquaintance once the lust, recklessness or whatever this was cooled off.

"I don't want to overstay my welcome," Rogers whispered into the ceiling one night after the excitement was over. They were lying side by side under a silk sheet and a shared sheen of cooling sweat. It made Rogers' skin look glossy, polished to perfection where the faint light filtering through the cracked open bathroom door reached him. It made him seem untouchable, as if the merest brush of a hand would rub off the fragile finish and ruin him. But then Bucky was the one who put it there, with his hands and lips and the friction of heat generated by two bodies in such circumstances. An ephemeral thing that would last until perspiration evaporated and would then need to be applied again and again. Well, Bucky didn't imagine he'd have trouble rising up to the challenge, as it were.

"No danger of that," Bucky reassured him. He traced a finger down Rogers' flank until he reached the edge of the sheet, low on his hip. Rogers' head swiveled his way until his eyes too caught the light and glittered. He blinked slowly, lazy or drained and oddly innocent, and Bucky felt a strange surge of tenderness. He went on, to mask the feeling. "But if it makes you feel any better I promise to kick you out the minute you turn into a nuisance."

Rogers made a noise in his throat that might have been amusement and said, "I know you will."

Bucky drifted off to sleep like this, with his fingers slipping from skin to silk and back again with every breath Rogers took. He thought he might have felt Rogers' answering touch on the back of his hand, but then again it might have been only wishful thinking.

* * *

Rogers had this peculiarity that he came with Bucky to off-the-grid joints with no complaint and practically _jumped_ at the opportunity to accompany him to work, but he would not go anywhere either of them might easily be recognized. Whether it was jumpiness over what they did, general avoidance of the industrious gossip network or something else was still unclear.

"I'll be happy to take you along," Bucky leaned in and whispered, as near to Rogers as he could get away with in public, "as soon as you tell me what you want with Stark."

Rogers made a face, exasperation, mulishness and just a touch of flustered discomfort, and Bucky flashed him a quick grin that was already too fond to be prudent. They were at Maison Glass, on the face of it to pick up some of the Italian caramel candies Maureen loved so. Bucky knew he ought to make an appearance at her husband's place on Long Island soon if he didn't want her to come calling unannounced or send someone to bug him.

There was also another, secret motive. He wanted to buy Rogers candy, to spoil him a little in some way, and that wasn't the kind of thing you presented to a pal, especially not to one you were having relations with. Best not to risk giving offense and just pretend to buy too many and share them with Rogers.

They should have been in and out in a minute, a quick stop before swinging somewhere for lunch and going back their separate ways until tonight. Unfortunately they'd come in just as old Mrs. Gibson-Stanley began revving up for a long, quarrelsome tirade because the store was out of the liqueur bonbons that were the only thing her ancient flatulent Pekinese, Peaches, would eat when he was "upset". The incident apparently required the attention of both shop girls, their professional smiles beginning to creep down their faces like cheap make-up.

Bucky, Rogers and the other patrons - a stodgy butler with an air of funereal solemnity and two pretty, coltish schoolgirls in matching berets who divided their attention evenly between the array of pralines and Rogers' profile - had no choice but to wait.

"It has nothing to do with you," Rogers said. It took Bucky a moment to recall exactly what they were talking about. Oh, yeah, Stark.

"That's what I've been saying. You have to make it worth my while."

"You're impossible."

"You like me anyway."

"I forget why."

Bucky laughed throatily, the sound of it nearly smothered into Rogers' collar. Rogers stopped breathing for a moment. Over Mrs. Gibson-Stanley's shoulder even Peaches was staring at Bucky reproachfully for his lack of discretion. He took care to put some space between them without doing anything as conspicuous as to step back.

He let his gaze wander away from Rogers in his figure-cutting cream suit and razor-edged jaw line. One of the schoolgirls smiled at him, shy and friendly, tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She must have been Mary's age so Bucky grinned back and touched the brim of his hat, and she blushed and turned away. It was just in time for Mrs. Gibson-Stanley to turn around and notice, and mutter something about the impertinent manners of today's youth. Bucky greeted her with such perfect decorum it left her speechless and made Rogers bite back his own mirth.

They ate one half of the "excess" caramels in the car, the other one later between Sidecars heavy on the lime juice and Bucky's bitter cigarettes, until there was no choice but to chase away the tangle of tastes by licking the hollow of Rogers' throat where the salt of his sweat gathered, pure and rare and only Bucky's to sample.

 

* * *

Bucky's sister had exiled herself from everyone - most especially her mother-in-law, but that part went unsaid - to recover from giving birth. In her case that meant until she looked better than before the pregnancy. Anything else would be deemed "letting herself go" by the bevy of society vultures that passed for her friends.

Of course Bucky wasn't everyone, and in any case he preferred to be the only guest expected. Less ceremony this way. He buzzed the right sequence at the gate and brought the car up a winding gravel path between tall molded hedges. It achieved the illusion of coming through a hedge maze and spared Maureen's guests the sight of her gardeners at work, but it got a little on Bucky's nerves. Especially now he had reason to suspect Maureen might grill him over something or other.

He parked next to the sport phaeton Stark had given Maureen for Christmas, left at an angle and with the top down. None of Dick's cars were to be seen. Bucky climbed out of his own car, picking up Maureen's share of the candy off the passenger seat, both pissed off for Maureen's sake and glad for his own that her husband wasn't here yet again.

Maureen was waiting for him in her favorite room, all comfortable lounge chairs and yellow wallpaper that made her joke about going insane for some reason Bucky didn't care to investigate. She looked good, even up close when Bucky kissed her on the cheek. 

"Look who appears," she said, arching an exquisitely plucked eyebrow. Bucky could recall a time when it resembled a caterpillar. "I have half a mind not to receive you next time if you're going to visit your niece so rarely, to say nothing about me."

"There's no point visiting her now," Bucky answered, sitting down without being invited. "Once she's old enough to pick a favorite uncle I'll start pulling my weight."

"Not like you're facing any stiff competition either way. Speaking of Tommy, do you know what he did last week? He called Daddy in his favorite club and left a message that he'd gotten engaged to a cigarette girl named Trixie. Of course Daddy asked for his messages to be read in the lounge like he always does. Good thing there was hardly anyone there."

"Was it even true?"

"Tommy claims it was at the time but that he broke it off afterwards. He was probably just playing a prank as usual."

Probably. No cigarette girl who'd managed to wheedle an engagement out of someone in Tommy's position would agree to end it so quietly without a serious pay-off and Tommy blew through his allowance too quickly to afford one.

Maureen sighed loudly, then got up and wandered off to mix herself a drink. Bucky didn't point out that it was before noon. He'd never tried to play Maureen's keeper and that accounted for much of why they got along so well.

"You keeping well?" Bucky asked. Maureen nodded briskly. She arranged herself artfully back into a chair and started playing with the ribbon on the caramel box Bucky had dropped on the end table. "No Dicks in the house?"

That made Maureen smile. "We're all out of Dicks at the moment. And no, I don't want to talk about it. What is the news with you?"

"Nothing to speak of," Bucky said, which was entirely true. He couldn't speak frankly about Rogers to his sister. "Things might pick up if that war in Europe lasts long enough to make some people in Washington nervous. There might be a contract in it for us."

Maureen hummed, pretending interest credibly well, then cocked her head and narrowed her eyes at Bucky. "You seem different though. I was under the impression you were dreadfully busy, but I can see now you must have _some_ diversions."

Bucky didn't volunteer any information. Maureen wasn't his keeper either.

They passed an hour or so catching up. Bucky stayed for lunch, and then went up to the nursery to see the baby. She was still pink, bald, and had the softest skin he'd ever felt. Maureen watched him hold her with a look of smug accomplishment.

"Do you want me to talk to Tommy?" Bucky asked.

"No, I've straightened him out for now," Maureen said, and touched Bucky's elbow. He leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. Neither one of them pointed out that Tommy would eventually need to be straightened out again, as he always did. "I'm glad you're well. You know, I'm having a little get-together in a fortnight, to celebrate re-joining the world of the living. It's very informal, there'll even be some theatre people there, the nicer ones. So you could bring the diversion along if you wanted."

It was genuine, but also Maureen's way of gauging just how unsuitable Bucky's new girl was. It was almost funny that depending on how much he disclosed Rogers was either entirely unobjectionable or utterly scandalous.

"I doubt I'll be able to make it," Bucky told her, and Maureen nodded, unsurprised. After all, the only difference between Tommy and Bucky was that Bucky never even pretended to get engaged to his cigarette girls.

* * *

Bucky had a thing with Stark in the afternoon but when he called the office from Maureen's to confirm Carmen told him Miss Hepburn had been by and that right after Stark had declared he would be leaving early and no one was to disturb him until further notice. Bucky thanked her, set down the receiver and drummed his fingers on top of it. Kate Hepburn had given Stark the boot about a year ago just before the wedding invitations were mailed out and right after the play rights Stark had bought for her assured her triumphant return to Hollywood. Now occasionally she came over to catch up. Apparently she was great friends with her first husband and assumed - or pretended to assume - Stark would be the same.

What Stark was was too proud to show her the door because that would be admitting she broke his heart and punched him in the nuts for good measure. So he acted incorrigibly louche in front of her and she mock-tutted at him and they assured each other there were no hard feelings between them and after she was off Stark slunk out like a kicked dog and found something unhealthy and frequently illegal to drink, smoke or fuck until he could convince himself he didn't care. Bucky would hunt him down and shake him into shape if the binge interfered with business, but there was nothing that couldn't wait going on right now. Better to let Stark get it out of his system.

Of course this also meant Bucky could sneak back home early. He was taking Rogers out tonight but perhaps they could fit in a quick run to the new French cafe on East 53rd street for a couple of chocolat glacés. Rogers had said he was planning a quiet day in though, so he might not be up for it.

Still, Bucky was looking forward to seeing him all the way up to his building and into the cool belly of the garage. So much so that on the way to the service elevator he ran into a woman hurrying round a concrete pillar. The woman hardly swayed when they collided, naturally steady on her feet. Bucky apologized, and the woman's look of surprise smoothed out quickly. She was a looker and a half, dark curls, dark eyes, curves on her the subdued dress she was wearing couldn't hope to disguise. Although there was something about her that bothered Bucky, didn't fit quite right.

He watched her stroll to a nice but anonymous Buick and get in. She didn't look his way again, just started the car, turned it around and up the ramp into the street. She had a broad, bold style of driving. It wasn't until Bucky was approaching the blue rectangle of his apartment door that he realized what had bothered him about her - he hadn't heard the click of her heels on the tile at all, as if the soles of her shoes had been capped in rubber.

Mysterious as the woman was Bucky forgot her as soon as he walked over the threshold. Rogers was just where Bucky had left him - reading by the window, looking as perfect as if he'd just been taken out of the box. His head turned up sharply at Bucky's return.

Bucky squeezed down next to him on the window seat and said, in lieu of a greeting, "I'm done being useful today."

That made Rogers relax minutely. He glanced up the stairs, quickly, then at Bucky with a singular focus that made Bucky feel like he'd been bestowed a gift or granted a boon.

"No trouble, I hope," Rogers said.

"None," Bucky assured him. _Business as usual._

"Your family's doing all right?"

"Yeah." That wasn't a lie either. It suddenly occurred to him Rogers never talked about his own family. Odd that, considering they were acquainted. He didn't talk about himself at all, for that matter. He'd seemed eager to get away from his cousins, and maybe his aversion to popular spots was less to do with avoiding gossip and more with avoiding relatives. Bucky decided to test that idea. "I haven't been getting along with my father for a while. My mother keeps nagging me about mending the rift so I can't talk with her either."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Rogers said. From anyone else it would have come out like an empty platitude, but Rogers made it sound sincere. "Should I ask about it?"

"It's no secret," Bucky stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankle and taking out his cigarette case. He scraped a match on his thumbnail and lit up. "My parents think Roosevelt is some kind of boogeyman out to confiscate all our money before an angry mob of the jealous underclasses slits our throats. They were really big on demonstrating money was tight for us too for a while. My mother wouldn't get the second pool filled like she was saving on the water bill, and my father resigned from three of his eleven clubs."

Rogers' fingers flexed on the cover of his book. Bucky could wager this part was all too familiar to him. The image of Steve's family's unobtrusive brownstone situated at an unextravagant location came to mind and was promptly banished. Bucky continued. "Meanwhile I'm off driving about in a ritzy car and throwing parties with enough champagne to drown a platoon of Bolsheviks. You can see how that would sour their cream."

"You're not worried about the boogeyman taxing away all your money?" Rogers asked, mirroring Bucky, stretching out his own long legs so his trousers grew tight over his hips. Bucky fought the urge to put his hand on Rogers' knee, follow the inseam up his thigh with his fingertips.

"Nah. He might try to, but not because I ordered an extra crate of booze. In the meantime spending money makes me more money in the long run, so that's what I'll keep doing. My father doesn't like that. I'm not about to stop. We're at an impasse."

Rogers appeared to digest that. It wasn't even half of it, of course, but then some petty details you had to keep to yourself. Like the way Bucky's dad had tried to compensate with Tommy, sent him to St. Paul's where the teachers spent four years trying to get him to speak correctly (affect an upper crust accent) and the rest of the pupils, already possessing the amazing ability to talk with their lower jaws thrust forward like pedigree chimpanzees, made fun of him for only accomplishing the same feat with a pencil stuck between his teeth. No wonder he went a little wild once he was out.

Meanwhile Maureen had the good sense to marry the heir of a shipping empire and the bad taste to do it out of love. Now that affection had cooled off on his end she was left with saving face and raising a girl-child he was thoroughly uninterested in. Mary seemed to be doing all right so far, a clever creature with a ready dimpled smile. Except lately all she ever talked about was her coming out as if it were a ticket to a magical kingdom of honey and butter. Bucky wondered if it was because afterwards she'd have to spend less time at home.

He rubbed the end of his cigarette against his lip. Again, the conversation had gotten away from him, became all about him.

"What about you, you getting along with your tribe?" Bucky asked, trying to get back on track.

"I used to. They disapprove of me now."

"Why's that?"

Rogers looked at his hands - open, upturned on his lap, thumbs flexing as if he wanted to check if they could. "They've been disappointed in me for a long time, but before they thought... I guess they thought I couldn't help it, that it wasn't my fault. Now I'm choosing to act ungrateful and irrational, at least in their eyes, and there's no excuse for that."

"You've lost me there, I'm afraid."

Rogers smiled as readily as if he were pulling an ace out of his sleeve. "I know, it's boring. I should start getting ready anyway. Mind if we catch a bite before going to the club?"

He got up, abandoning his book with Bucky on the seat. For a second Bucky considered forcing the issue even after Rogers' clumsy evasion, telling Rogers that he didn't mean it like that, that he only wanted to understand. But it was no use if Rogers didn't want to tell him.

"Sure," Bucky said. "Whatever you want."

* * *

The club in Harlem still looked like the warehouse it'd housed before but the push outside attested to its popularity. Bucky had heard Lena Horne perform twice before and though she looked green she knew how to work a crowd. 

Inside it was jam-packed, about two hundred blacks sitting and standing and jostling and several tables of whites dotted around like specks of dandruff on a lapel. The stink of reefers and sweat was like a wall you slammed headfirst in. Bucky pushed Rogers in front of him with a hand on his shoulder so they wouldn't lose each other but Rogers kept half-turning around, asking questions, pointing out this or that. Bucky could tell he was having a ball already.

He would need to leave very soon and that might be the end, but tonight they were together. Tomorrow's worries ought not to spoil today's happiness, like some poet or other had said, and Bucky was eager to show Rogers a good time while he had him.

They could have tipped the occupants of some table to give it up, but Rogers was eyeing the band so instead they picked up drinks and made their way to the edge of the cramped dance floor. The musicians shuffled into place, tucking their own half-empty glasses under their rickety chairs. Then the singer sashayed to the microphone, white dress glimmering through cigarette fog. And Rogers, his plus one, his secret in plain sight, the only show Bucky had come to see, watched it all raptly. Aligned with Bucky sleeve to sleeve, a beating pulse a finger's width away.

The woman on stage began to trill, Rogers tipped his head back, and it was on.

* * *

Hours later Bucky was driving through the crisp nighttime air with a bright-eyed Rogers in the passenger seat. Bucky crooned snatches of _Mad About The Boy_ to make Rogers blush, taking it up whenever the splash of color along the bridge of his nose started fading away. It worked like a charm.

Rogers was always hungry, so they swung by the Bodega after because it served food until four. Rogers ate his way through a plate of broiled venison chops with neat efficiency and Bucky kept himself occupied by stealing bites of meat dipped in chestnut and currant jelly sauce between trying to make Rogers laugh with his mouth full. Around them people were talking and dancing and even arguing one degree slower and quieter, like clockwork figurines in need of winding up. He looked idly at the swaying couples, the women's shimmering gowns melting into one pulsing mass, their bare arms floating above it like the reaching limbs of swimmers.

They were headed home through streets as close to deserted as New York streets ever got when Rogers said out of the blue, "Did you want to dance back at the club?"

"Maybe a little. I didn't want to get thrown out though, it's a nice place."

"I meant with a woman."

"I know what you meant. I didn't feel like dancing."

Rogers had nothing to say to that but the silence that followed was companionable. Bucky would have assumed Rogers was feeling his drink if he didn't seem to hold his liquor better than a tank wagon. Now there was a difference between him and Steve. Bucky frowned. It was the first time he'd thought about Steve in a while.

In the safety of his locked, curtained apartment he kissed Rogers like he'd wanted to do all night. He snuck his hands around Rogers' waist to grab his belt and pull him close until their hips were flush together. The spark of lust that followed bit him like a bee sting - an itch and a pain and a shock to the system that left behind a pulsing ache which couldn't be ignored.

"I need to make a phone call," Bucky said, roughly rubbing his lips against Rogers' jaw to make the feel of it last. "I won't be long."

Rogers walked backwards the first few steps to the staircase, eyes on Bucky and unbuttoning his jacket as he went. If Bucky had needed an incentive to hurry this would have done the job with more to spare. Once Rogers disappeared inside his bedroom, Bucky ran a hand through his hair and stuck a cigarette in his mouth without lighting it, to give his mind time to clear. There was no helping it, he had to check up on Stark.

He ran up the stairs and through the door to the study, closing it hastily behind. The phone was on the far end of the desk, near the windows. He picked up the receiver, made the call, waited to be connected. All the while he was thinking about Rogers stripping up two brick walls away.

"Come on, Stark, don't make me come get you," he muttered, and turned away from the desk.

The photograph on the wall was hanging level.

Bucky froze. It was an ordinary view of New York Harbor, in a plain walnut frame. Bucky always kept it just a little bit crooked to the left. He reached out and swung it aside on its hook. The safe behind it looked reassuringly solid, but that didn't mean much.

The call chose that moment to go through. Bucky spoke automatically with Stark's butler. Yes, Mr. Stark had just come in. No, he didn't look too under the weather. Bucky hanged up, reassured that Stark wouldn't need his stomach pumped anytime tonight, and went back to his mystery.

He opened the safe, quickly rifling through the few contents. A thousand dollars in cash, all seemingly there, the deed to the apartment, present, some other unimportant things. All of it looking completely undisturbed. Bucky was probably being paranoid. Rogers must have wandered in, bored, and righted the picture, or even checked for a safe. Normal curiosity, and Bucky had given him the run of the house.

At the same time it wasn't inconceivable that someone had broken in while they were out and went through Bucky's things with professionally light fingers. He looked through his bureau, around the room. Everything was as it should be. He resolved to ask Rogers about it later and that brought up the thought of the man himself and the realization that he'd tarried around enough.

Rogers was already in the bath, eyes closed and the back of his head resting against the marble trim.

"I call that long," he said, not deigning to look at Bucky.

"And I'm not even naked yet."

Rogers snorted. Tough crowd. Undeterred, Bucky shed his clothes with inspired speed.

The courteous thing would have been to rinse off even if he'd taken a shower before they left, but Bucky didn't care to be courteous tonight. His skin felt hot, inflamed. The water closed around his calves, then his thighs, his waist, so cool and refreshing it made him groan out loud. He dipped his head back to wet his hair and when he emerged, shaking droplets out of his eyes, Rogers was watching him. Bucky touched him under the water, to see what he could get away with. Turned out he could get away with a lot.

He pressed his thumbs into the little valleys between Rogers' abdominal muscles, then stroked the joints of leg and torso until Rogers' legs fell open and Bucky could sidle up between them to kiss him. Rogers was getting better at breathing through it, so it lasted a long time.

"I want to try something," Bucky said, and tried to turn Rogers around. Rogers budged about as far as a shore side cliff. "I'll make it worth your while."

Rogers sighed, but Bucky pawed at him until they were arranged to his liking, Rogers clutching the lip of the tub and Bucky plastered over his back. He nipped the side of Rogers' neck playfully and Rogers' fingers scratched at his arm. His nails were sharper, the texture of his skin different under the water, smoother and firmer as if Bucky were touching him through a pair of chamois gloves. And wasn't that a fine trick to try another day.

For now Bucky straightened up and watched the muscles of Rogers' back ripple under the harsh overhead light. He ran his palms down the broad span of his ribs to the sinuous curve at the bottom of his spine, just feeling the swell of it at first. And he really was discourteous tonight because as soon as his hands curled over Rogers' hips Bucky tugged him back. His cock nestled in between Rogers' cheeks like it was meant to fit there.

Rogers was breathing raggedly and looking disoriented as he tried to look over his shoulder. Bucky kissed the side of his mouth, tender with lust.

"Just a little," he mouthed against Rogers' jaw. "Don’t make me stop. I don’t ever want to stop."

Rogers groaned and clutched Bucky's thigh like his life depended on it. Bucky's hips rolled up of their own accord. Rogers' sweet, firm ass cushioned him, pliantly parted. He could fuck Rogers for real like this, hold him open and- He could but he wouldn't, he wouldn't even ask because that was degrading, unclean and painful, and Bucky never wanted to subject Rogers to that. He wanted Rogers to feel good and come back for more. This was already too close to it, too presumptuous. Rogers generously didn't protest the liberties Bucky was taking with his body and Bucky didn't want to push it. He tried to soothe his cock against Rogers’ skin in small rubs so he wouldn't be tempted to do something stupid, but it wasn't nearly enough.

Rogers groaned again and rocked back against him, groped back blindly and dragged Bucky's hand to his own neglected erection. Bucky held him loosely and let the jostling of their hips drive Rogers' cock in and out of his fist. It was simple, animal pleasure, not requiring thought or doubt. They ground their way into coming, Bucky all over Rogers' back, Rogers clouding the water seconds afterwards.

Then it was over, leaving behind an aftertaste of pleasant exhaustion. Unthinking, Bucky brushed his lips against Rogers' temple and was surprised to discover it wasn't awkward at all.

"That's got to be the dirtiest bath I've ever taken," he confessed. Rogers fought not to grin and lost.

"Should I feel used? Or flattered?"

He was clearly joking, but it hit a little too close to home. Bucky boxed him in against the side of the tub, this time with a different purpose in mind.

"Never used," he promised, and it might not have been true a few weeks ago when he couldn't help but see Steve reflected in Rogers' every move but it was now.

There was a pause, a yawning pause that made Bucky suddenly wonder. But then Rogers pulled him in quickly, cheek to cheek so Bucky wouldn't see his face.

"Now I'm definitely flattered. To think I made you act so serious for even one second," the words spilled, almost pleading.

It wasn't _acting_ serious, but then Rogers must have known that. Bucky had also known how erratic Rogers could be, and how secretive, and in the end it didn't bother him enough to make a difference. He could just glimpse the tantalizing possibility of an unthinkable, intangible reward beyond the risk of feeling something for Rogers. Something like friendship, a connection or an intimacy Bucky couldn't pin but was excited to discover more about. He could wait for Rogers to get on the same page.

Three days later Rogers mentioned a family event he couldn't possibly miss. He hunted down his belongings from the distant corners they hid in and said he'd already called for a car. He darted in to kiss Bucky at the door, then informed him - eyelashes so low they were brushing the dark circles under his eyes - that he had secured an invitation to the 1st of September party Stark Industries threw for some military bigwigs every year and that if Bucky wanted to catch up afterwards Rogers would keep the rest of his evening open. Then he was out.

Bucky estimated the odds were eighty/twenty in his favor that Rogers wouldn't stonewall him the next time they met.

* * *

"You're a sight for sore eyes," Maureen said out of the corner of her glued-on smile. "I swear, another half-hour here and _I_ would jump at the chance to purchase some of your rockets."

"I'll give you a discount," Bucky told her. He wasn't in the best mood himself. He'd been nearly late because Tommy had called from lock-up in Connecticut where he'd landed when he tried to take a piss on the cop who'd pulled him up for speeding. The shouting match escalated when Bucky told him he'd sent a lawyer to get him out instead of coming in person. Now he couldn't see either Stark or Rogers anywhere and he was getting tired of fielding off their guests, each believing they were more important and entitled to Bucky's time than the next.

"The bulk discount, and then I'll test some on Richard. It would be self defense since I'm bored half to death and it's his fault," Maureen said breezily. She hung onto Bucky's arm with one hand and onto a champagne flute with the other as if to a lifeline. Outwardly she looked like a million bucks after taxes. "Until just now I was almost as mad at you, you know. You sly fox."

Bucky scanned the room, only listening to her with half an ear. 

"Aren't you going to ask me why I'm mad at you?"

"Asking."

There Stark was at least, cornered between a bespectacled chrome dome, a dour-looking colonel and a woman with a dress the exact same shade as the wine in her glass. The bald guy was talking animatedly but Stark's gaze kept wandering from him to the dame. She had her back on Bucky and if the front matched the view he could see why Stark hadn't extricated himself from the conversation.

"Because you don't tell me _anything_. I have to learn what's going on with you from Caresse Lester of all people."

Bucky's eyes snapped back to Maureen. She sensed he'd stiffened up and looked up at him with newly sparked curiosity.

"I know I always said you should stop avoiding Steve - it was childish and cruel, but I wouldn't have rubbed it in too much. I'm just glad you're friendly again."

"What are you talking about?" Bucky asked. Beyond Maureen's familiar shape the woman Stark was staring at shifted to survey the entrance. The movement caught Bucky's attention, and then so did her face. Stern, beautiful, red-lipped - it was the woman he'd bumped into the other day.

"You ran off on the Lesters with Steve, didn't you?" Maureen went on.

"That's right," Bucky heard someone saying. "He was there with his cousins."

"Yes, Clive and Vivian. God, it's been so long. I don't think I've seen either one of them since my wedding."

Bucky suddenly remembered Clive. A lanky fellow with a mop of brown hair who'd spent half the wedding breakfast chasing peacocks across the lawn with Mary.

He'd looked nothing like Steve.

The woman in red must have seen whoever she was waiting for arrive because she forgot herself for one second. Her primly closed legs took up a wider stance. The arrow-straight back that had looked ladylike a second ago now screamed "at attention". It only lasted a moment before the woman turned back to Stark, just a beauty at a party once more.

Bucky wasn't even surprised when he looked at the door and saw Rogers. Beyond fashionably late to a gathering with people who didn't appreciate either lateness or fashion as if he hadn't decided whether to show up till the last minute.

"You can catch up with Steve now if you like," Bucky said.

Maureen glanced at Rogers and said, "Oh, yes, here he is. To be honest I'm not sure I want to catch up. I don't know if I'll ever get used to him looking like this. It's almost scary what doctors can do these days." She sounded much less casual now. "Is something wrong? You don't look any too well."

"I'm fine," Bucky said. His back had broken out into a cold sweat and he was an idiot, a hopeless idiot, but otherwise he was fine.

Rogers - Steve, fuck, it was Steve - saw them, saw him, like he'd been looking. He took them in, Maureen too preoccupied to notice him, worried about Bucky now. Bucky had no idea what he looked like but whatever it was it must have been enough to tip Steve off. He blanched, his cheeks worked once, then he was still. He didn't look surprised. Bucky didn't want to look at him but he couldn't stop himself.

Later on he couldn't even remember how he'd placated Maureen, but he found himself alone, walking towards Steve through yet another crowd. The bar at the Plaza, the Lesters' party and now this, he was always chasing after Steve in crowds of shadows, of cardboard obstacles. Steve who stood stiffly now, waiting for Bucky to catch up. Through the gaps in the crowd he was disorienting, two familiar people coalescing into a stranger. Bucky had no idea what to say to him. 

"Do you still want me to introduce you to Stark?" was what came out.

"Bucky-"

Bucky walked off. Not in Stark's direction, out of the conference hall. He could hear Steve trampling behind him before they got out and there was no crowd to contend with or hide behind. This was still no place to talk. The row of offices on the other side of the hallway was locked and sound carried too well in the wide, echoing staircases and corridors of the Stark Industries building, so Bucky made a beeline for the elevator. No operator this late so when Steve barged in after him Bucky punched the button for the ground floor before Steve had even closed the mesh. The metal cage of the elevator started sinking.

"Bucky?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry."

"What for?"

A pause in the space of one floor.

"Is this permanent?" Bucky asked. Rogers nodded slowly. "Is the army holding you in some way? Making you work for them in exchange for whatever they did?"

"No," Rogers said. He shuffled from one leg to the other. "It wasn't the army. My parents paid a doctor to fix me. He was trying to get the military to finance his research but they didn't believe him. They still don't."

"So that night..."

"It was right after. I didn't expect it to be like this. I- I panicked. I ran off. When I cooled off I tried finding Dr. Erskine, but I ran into you."

There were a lot of rooming houses in the West Forties and Fifties, cheap places for bachelors who didn't yet have a permanent place in the city. People who might make a habit of going to the nearest cheap eatery for grub. It all started to make sense now, little pieces fluttering in place by themselves one after the other. Rogers' strange moods, his insistent avoidance of places and people they both knew or frequented.

"Where does Stark come into this? You must want him for something you couldn't get from me, so not money."

Rogers opened his mouth to answer, then hesitated. His back hit the metal cage with a rattle.

"I'll answer your questions, but- I didn't mean to mislead you. At first you assumed and it was supposed to be only the one night-"

"I don't want to talk about that."

"-and when I ran into you again for some reason I didn't want you to find out. I suppose I liked getting to meet you again as someone else. Getting to know you as someone else." He stared at Bucky radiating misery and a brittle sort of expectancy. For a moment Bucky was ten again, confronting a testing, tentative Steve for the first few minutes of every visit as if Bucky was a strange dog that might still bite him, or even earlier, tipping Steve's head back in the backseat of a police car to stave off his nosebleed and listening to Steve inform him with dogged grimness exactly what that kid three times his size did that couldn't be abided. Steve had no right to look like he was the injured party here.

“That's fucking wonderful, that makes it all better,” Bucky snapped, suddenly furious. It had been building up inside him since the truth hit him, rolling under his skin ready to burst out of him, “You did know me, Steve, that's the point. You walk away on me and then you lie to me so you can get what you had for the taking three years ago. I don't get you."

Steve brought up his hand to cover his eyes like he was tired or wanted to hide, but when he lowered it there was a self-deprecating little smile playing on his lips. "But it wasn't the same thing, was it? Three years ago I was a one night's amusement that only happened because you pitied me and now I've graduated to a fling."

And yeah, Bucky had said that, but only because Steve had rejected him first. It wasn't one of his prouder moments and he probably did owe Steve an apology about that, if only Steve hadn't moved on to, what? Getting restitution his own way?

"That's a convenient way to think about it, _Rogers_. Makes it all right to lie to me, is that it?"

Steve swallowed thickly, but didn't look away.

"It's not all right. For what it's worth I'm sorry, Bucky, I really am. You're absolutely right to be angry and I can't ask you to trust me again. I won't trouble you any more."

"As easy as that, huh? You got what you wanted out of me and you're ending it now but it's all for my own good. You know, I've gone through a lot of women but at least they knew what was what and I never tried to pretend I was doing them a favor."

"That's right. You've gone through a lot of women," Steve said. "Men too, for all I know. So don't act like it's different now just because you're smarting that you didn't figure it out sooner."

What happened after was a bit of a blur. Bucky tried to slam Steve against the iron lattice and Steve wasn't in the mood to be manhandled just then so he turned the tables on Bucky and suddenly they were pressed together, their legs tangled, the rough side of Steve's thumb grazing Bucky's neck, Bucky's fingers closed around the back of Steve's jacket.

Unhappy with all the jolting, the lightbulb flickered. It illuminated Steve's face in pulses, white as a sheet before it flushed furiously. His hand kneaded Bucky's shoulder as if he couldn't decide whether to let go or not.

It felt like an age, a lifetime Bucky had spent touching this man, watching him, trying to figure him out and bring him pleasure and take possession of him in a thousand subtle ways because he didn't dare hope for the right to do it in any overt ones. His body had learned to respond to Steve's. It did so now, and that infuriated him most of all.

He tugged Steve's head away by the hair - he'd never claimed he played fair - and snarled up at Steve's widening eyes, "I'm walking out of here and I'm giving Stark the exact same advice I would have if I hadn't brought you home, because I'm professional like that. Then I'm washing my hands off you and this whole business. But just so you don't break a hand patting yourself on the back over how harmless your little game was, let's make one thing clear. I was keen on you like you couldn't imagine. Maybe I deserved it, maybe it was no more than I owed you, but you used me and toyed with me. Get over yourself enough to give me that."

He pushed Steve and in his shock Steve stumbled back. The elevator was motionless now, long since reached the ground floor. With a flash of insight Bucky could have gone without, he realized what was wrong.

"Jesus, your parents really did a number on you," he said. "I used to think they just made you feel weak, but they really convinced you you could treat people however you wanted because you didn't matter enough to hurt anyone."

He didn't wait to see what effect his words would have, if any. He had to get out of that cage. Opening the door took an eternity but Bucky finally sprung out and just took off up the stairs once again. He felt like someone had broken him open and scooped up the soft squishy parts inside. That had been the longest conversation about his feelings he'd ever had, and if that's how it went he should have stuck with not having any feelings to begin with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this was marked as a 3-parter but I severely underestimated how many words each scene would take up once written out, so I split the last part in 2.


End file.
